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04 Mar 2015 10:55:28am

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There's some great thoughts expressed here, particularly by Ian Dunlop; his comments between 42 and 48 minutes should be listened to carefully.

Unfortunately there is an overarching issue that is just hinted at here but need more exposure; that issue is economic growth. The consequences of economic growth are twofold in this context.

There are several options presented here for reducing our use of oil (and other fossil fuel) based energy, particularly energy used for transport. Such things include electric cars, reducing car use, and other technological advances that will improve the efficiency of transport. Initially, those ideas may make a moderate difference; my guess would be that perhaps thirty percent would be a great success. Fifty percent reduction would be an amazing success.

The global economy is growing at about three-and-a-half percent per year, which means that it double in size every twenty years. As the economy grows our use of oil (and all resources) grows with it and would also double in this period. This means that the almost unimaginable reduction in the intensity of our use of oil of fifty percent would be negated by the doubling of the economy in just twenty years. In another twenty years again the size of the economy will have quadrupled compared to the size it is now, and yet we will probably have done nearly all that we can to reduce our use of oil, certainly all the things that are easy to do and that make a big difference, in the first twenty years, and we will have little more that we can do. And the economy will go on doubling every twenty years.

If we were to be able to achieve some the reductions described here we would reduce our consumption of oil and of other resources too. However, this would reduce the amount of economic activity that we perform, reducing, or even reversing, economic growth.

Modern economies are structured so that they must grow; if they don’t grow they will collapse into recession and depression. If the actions that we take reduce economic activity, then our governments will react to stop us, or will stimulate activity in other areas of the economy, because the economy MUST grow. (You can find out why at tinyurl.com/whygrowth .) These reactions will likely result in increased oil use, and increased use of other resources.

Understanding the consequences of the exponential nature of economic growth is critical to understanding resource issues like this. (You can finds out more at tinyurl.com/expongrowth .) No resource issue like oil use can be truly resolved without removing the need for economic growth.

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